It takes seven chapters to reach this high

The First Seven Chapters Bring Us to — this amazing chapter

The Heart of the Message: The Lord drafted Paul for the first seven chapters to take away your breath!  God converses with any who listen, and His first words are Jesus Justifies! 

We climbed in a brisk, cloudless morning into the sky surrounding Casa Grande.  Four of us pushed hard and the climb felt demanding.  We stopped on a rock outcropping, turned to look down, and then up and I was shocked at how far we had come in six hours.  And I was amazed at how close we were to our goal! 

Less often than I should, I take a breather.  I create space between me and my-every-day.  In this space, I see astounding things.  Imagine a volcanologist on the rim, who studies clastic explosions, gases, and lava tubes in labs, but is only now stopping to see, to take in a volcano. 

Imagine a geologist works the Grand Canyon bagging rocks, staring at the ground, and fails to turn, to take in the canyon, to take in its magnificence! What will you see to back up and look over your life?  Can you see what is HUGE, full of grandeur, beauty, and mystery?

Standing on a mountain, sitting in the middle of your marriage, languishing in a week at school, the call is simple.  STEP BACK AND SEE God’s hand moving across time in broad strokes of your life.  Have you ever watched clouds move across a mountain’s face?

Verse by verse, minute to minute, and day-by-day forms our lives.  Jesus drew away from the press of crowds to be alone with God: to get the “big picture.”  Mostly we study verses, but consider seven chapters of Romans: you can read them in 45 minutes!  We move at the speed-of-Sunday-School, but it only takes the length of two re-runs of Friends or Full House to read the first seven chapters.  We make getting away to gain perspective a huge undertaking.  Not so.  I pray God gives you some big pictures from this huge letter. 

Remember the letter’s first, big point:  “For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, ‘But the righteous man (woman) shall live by faith’” Romans 1:16-17.

Do you love catching up with friends?  You ask most important questions first; “How are you?  How are the kids?  How is grandma?  OR do you do busyness?  I am hating work, and so on.”  Paul wrote the first, most important information first. 

Paul first off: “I am not ashamed.”  I park my life here.  I stake my reputation on this.  I live and die by these words.  Eight-year-old Elio ran into his Sudan village as Muslim militants hit it.  He screamed for his mom to run: too late.  They killed her.  They killed his family, and left him.  That night they told him to build a fire.  He did, hoping they would cook dinner.  As the fire raged, they said, “You must recant being a Christian!  Give up this nonsense!”  Eight-year-old Elio, said, “I cannot.  I have already decided.”  The soldiers threw him into the fire and left the village.  Elio barely lived, dragging into a missionary hospital.  I am not ashamed.  Want to stand next to Elio in heaven?  

Paul will die believing God justified us in Jesus.  He will die because Christ is the power of salvation.  150,000 people die around the world daily.  Cassie Bernal in Columbine was one of 15 dying on her day in high school.  You will stand between Elio and Cassie, when you say, “I was not ashamed” to everyone.

As people are dying for Him, do you have the courage to live for Him? 

Remember: in the first three chapters Paul told us God converses with everyone.  He talks to them through creation.  He talks to them through any law they know.  God talks to them in their religion, and speaks through their conscience.  Do you remember none of us are good enough, and all of us fall short of the mark of Jesus Christ?  Our conversations are not enough to save us. 

Remember: we are equal without Christ Jesus as our Justifier.  Hopeless.  Equal.  Apart from the Law God’s righteousness has been manifested, being witnessed by the Law and the Prophets, even God’s righteousness through faith in Jesus Christ for all those who believe; for there is no distinction [all of our sense of equality!] For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus Romans 3:21-24. 

Remember: all your church going friends have no hope in hell without Christ as Justifier and Redeemer?  Do you remember your good friends or nice people have no hope to escape damnation without Christ’s real righteousness?  Do you remember that the entire Bible spoke of Jesus’ coming, and the wonder of His great saving act in dying? 

That’s the first three chapters. 

Do you remember four incredible freedoms Paul trumpets in chapters 4-7?  Paul reminds us we are free from sin, God’s wrath, death, and religion?  Do you live free? 

Freedom One:  Freedom from Sin.   Romans 4:7-8 asks, do you remember, blessed are those whose lawless deeds have been forgiven, and whose sins have been covered.  ⁸Blessed is the person whose sin the Lord will not take into account.  There is no sin from which we cannot proclaim freedom!  Are you that free today?  Hear it again ⁸Blessed is the person whose sin the Lord will not take into account.  Have you escaped your own accounting, or the accounting of others?  Quit beating up on you.  Suspend the accounts if forgiven.  Be free!

Freedom Two:  Freedom from God’s Wrath.  Romans 4:15 the Law brings about wrath, but where there is no law, neither is there violation.  No violation, no wrath.  Remember: audacious Paul screams against making religion a fearful, wrath filled thing.  Romans 5:9, much more then, having now been justified by His [Jesus] blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through Him.”  The only One whose anger you had to fear loved you first!

Freedom Three:  Freedom from Death: Do you not know all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death?  So we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, in order that as Christ was raised from the dead through the Father’s glory, so we too might walk in newness of life.  For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall be also in the likeness of His resurrection. Romans 6:3-5.  Baptism is a symbol.  Moreover, it is so real! I actually passed through my first death in those waters. 

Did you die to your fear of death, because you have Christ?  Did you grow past your lack of life, to life more abundantly in Christ?  Did you plug into life beyond death?  Are you so free, or would you just die for people to know you are a Christian?

Freedom Four:  Freedom from Religion.  Romans 7:4 you also were made to die to the Law through the body of Christ, [WHY] that you might be joined to another [to Christ], to Him who was raised from the dead, that we might bear fruit for God.  Sure, religion is easier than bearing free fruit.  Have you left religion, to be joined to Christ?  Good.  Your fruit is showing. 

I kissed religion good-bye: no longer need it.  I have a relationship.  I chose relationship with my Redeemer over religion.  You go to church?  That’s like saying “I go to bridal boutiques all the time.  I’m registered at every store in town!” 

Okay, got a fiancé? 

“No.” 

I smile because you are insane.  I reply, “I got married.  This is my wife, Jill.  We are way beyond bridal boutiques and registering at stores.”  We have the relationship!

Paul screams, “I did religion!  Do life!  Go with Jesus!” 

Why?  Remember these verses.  5:1 so having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom also we have obtained our introduction by faith into this grace in which we stand; and we exult in hope of the glory of God.

Paul here says two things.  Both change us.  First, he says that in Christ, He has all he hunted in religion.  He has the justification he hunted.  He has the grace he groused.  He has the hope he harangued others to have.  He has all the glory.  Paul got it all.  He got his BEGINNING with Christ.  Paul screams as loud as he can, “This is not pie in the sky!  It’s not finish line.  God gives these to us as beginners in Christ!”

Paul says another thing equally radical.  He reveals God’s end of the mystery.  God IS and He’s reaching to you.  IS. 

I remember my first time to fly a kite at night.  My grandfather launched it.  My seven-year-old hands held the line as string unspooled up into dark sky.  I no longer saw the blue kite, so its tugs on the line felt unreal.  With no moon or clouds, my grandfather was explaining it to me.  I stared at him, holding a tugging line.  It was too much to explain to me.  He said the kite was hundreds of feet in the night sky.  It was too wonderful.  I held a mystery.  He was explaining, but I held a tugging IS, and his reason(s) were beyond me!

Do not exchange mystery for scientific explanations.  Evolutionists explain how we occurred while still missing much of the story.  They think mystery is lessened by dry sounding facts, like desiccated theology.  Economists explain money, so we fear God can no longer do anything with world markets.  Meteorologists define dew points, microbursts, El Niño and Niña, and polar vortexes.  We remove weather’s mystery until riveted to the TV tornado trackers, still missing the IS!

Paul begins with mystery: gospel!  Unimaginably great news!  God IS.  It is amazing and mysterious.  Preachers say, “God did it because of this, or because He’s like this.”  We try to explain things, and remove the mystery.  We all, still face the mystery.  We all, still need faith.  Respond to God.  Do not spend your energy explaining.  Spend your energy responding.  

How bad did it have to get before Paul dropped explanations and cried out to God?  How much religion did he do before he gave up death and wrath for Jesus?  How much Law did Paul break himself on before he trusted Jesus as his Justifier?  How bad did it get before Paul traded religion for a Redeemer?  How far did Paul go in explaining until he was wrapped up in mystery?  How long did he shout empty “whys” before he was seized by IS?  Oh, and that is God’s name ― “I IS!”

Remember Romans 7:22-25 For I joyfully concur with the law of God in the inner man, but I see a different law in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind, and making me a prisoner of the law of sin which is in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death? (That’s how far he went!)  Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, on the one hand I myself with my mind am serving the law of God, but on the other, with my flesh the law of sin.

This was how far Paul went in his empty religion:  7:24 Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death?  We are about to study Romans 8.  Deep water.

Peek at the next verse, [8:1] so now there isn’t any condemnation for those who are in Christ: the first audacious thing Paul says about God in the eighth chapter.  This verse unlocks what we know of God beyond religion.  Romans 8 repeatedly differs from what I expected.  WHY?  Really, why spend time trying to explain it, when you could fall in love with it and live it? 

Jill fell for me.  I might have asked enough questions to run her off.  It was smart to take her falling for me as my new IS, and spend energy living my love back to her as God enables!

My mom was sick in bed at age 17 when her piano teacher’s son who was 21 came to see her.  He could only say, “I want to take care of you forever!”  He fought a war for her, and became her doctor through cancer.  She didn’t drive him away with a million questions, and doubts.  She responded.  She is my mom.  He is my dad.  They are part of my IS.

The God of heaven comes to you to justify you and cleanse you!  You can ask a million questions, but say “yes” first and RESPOND.  Live back to Him.  Respond to the mystery today. 

Paul reveals God’s fourth, astonishing Freedom.

The First Freedom is from Wrath.                  Hard to believe.

    The Second Freedom is from Sin.              Stupefying.

        The Third Freedom is from Law (Religion).      Unbelievable

            And now…         The Fourth Freedom: Is Freedom from Death

The Reality for Christians

³”Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death? ⁴Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, in order that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.” [1]
“⁸Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him” Romans 6:8.

²⁴Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death? 8:1There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. ²For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death. ³For what the Law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did: sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh, Romans 7:24, 8:1-8:3

¹³”If you are living according to the flesh, you must die; but if by the Spirit you are putting to death the deeds of the body, you will live” Romans 8:13.

Imagine entering a church where Snow White, herself, gives a children’s sermon.  She says a fairy tale is a “made-up story teaching big truths. Hansel and Gretel teach stay out of deep woods.  My story says not to trust food from old crones, but trust dwarves and princes God sends you.”

The Bible is about life and living so it mentions those in 1175 verses.  But it mentions death 950 times.  In fact the two often appear together, living and dying, life and death.  Why?  Because we find life and death entwined everywhere. 

Death’s story, and our hope to recover from it starts in Eden’s Garden.  As the serpent seduces Eve, death awaits.  Eve tells the serpent, “God said, ‘you shall not eat from or touch that [knowledge-of-good-and-evil] tree, lest you die.’ The serpent lies, ‘You’ll surely not die!’”[2]

Eve did die, but only after one son killed her other son, and she grew bone weary with years.  Death came in ripples, then washed over her as a wave. 

Ruth stared down death.  We quote her at weddings.  “Where you (Naomi) die, I die, and there I’ll be buried. Thus may the Lord do to me, and worse, if anything but death parts us.”1:17

God held back Hezekiah’s death for fifteen years.  In his extension he showed Babylon emissaries all his gold.  Dumb!  Hezekiah planted seeds of Jerusalem’s death in his extended life.[3]

Job’s wife harangued him, “Curse God and die!”[4]  Job hoped for death more than “hidden treasure” 3:21.  He preferred it over his pains 7:15.  He finally wonders, “When a man dies, where is he?” 14:10. “If I die, will I live again?” 14:14. Finally Job trusts “You, God, will bring me to death and to the house of meeting for all living” 30:23.  Living and dying together. 

David lived death and hoped to escape it in his Songs.  “Death’s terrors have fallen on me” 55:4.  “You deliver my soul from death so I may walk before You in the light of the living” 56:13.  “And to the Lord belong escapes from death” 68:20.  But David came to see, “What man can live and not see death?” 89:48. And he found, “Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His godly ones” 116:15.  Finally came Jesus, the Son of David.  Everything changed.  [Ps. 73:23, 26!]

Jesus lived on both sides of death.  At Jairus’ daughter’s funeral, Jesus told everyone “‘[go home]; for the girl has not died, but is asleep.’”  They laughed at Him” Matthew 9:24.

So we come to God’s fourth freedom.  Audacious.  Pushing belief.  Is Jesus Lord of your life and death?  Jesus promises the audacious!  Hear Him:

“…she who hears My word, and believes Him who sent Me, has eternal life, and does not come into judgment, but has passed out of death into life” John 5:24.  C.S. Lewis saw it in The Great Divorce.  He showed that at the instant we profess Christ, we live in heaven.  Reject Him?  Start in hell.  You’ve heard this?  “I don’t fear hell, I already lived there!”  Tasted hell?  Sure, but it gets infinitely worse. 

Heaven must be truer, more powerful than the hell we accept!

Jesus never flinched. “… I tell you, if anyone keeps My word she shall never see death” John 8:51.  Whoa, Jesus!  Leave yourself an out!  NEVER see death?”

Now Paul builds on Christ’s case: sin brings death, but Jesus frees us from both!

To show free from death, Paul first showed we’re free from wrath, then free from sin.  Hear him, “Just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, so death spread to all men, because all sinned”[5].  Sin’s slime is death.  James:  But you are tempted when carried away and enticed by your own lust.  When lust conceives, it gives birth to sin; and when sin is accomplished, it brings forth death. James 1:14-15

My sin drags along consequences to my bad choices.  Moreover, my sin brings its slime: death.  My sin brings death to my children, my marriage, and my life. 

Consider: drunk drivers kill 55% of those killed on highways.  They drink, hop in cars with death, and kill a family.  And the irony?  Death more likely takes the family than the drunk!

Smoking kills.  If a mom-to-be smokes, birth defects are more common.  Further, Sudden Infant Death Syndrome occurs with second-hand smoke.  Sin births death.  We die in breaths.

Girls with STDs face their baby’s death more often.  Or sterility.  Or cancer.  STDs are pre-cancerous.  Death by sin quashes hopes and intimacy.  Death ripples in before washing over us.

Death consummates sin: it is sin’s last intimacy.  A Public Service Spot against unprotected sex: shows a guy progressively rotting and flirting at a bar asking, “Wanna come home with me?”  

In great fairy tales, something more powerful than death supplants it, vanquishes it.  We weep and clap at fairy tales, and we trust Place me like a seal over your heart, like a seal on your arm; for love is as strong as death….  It burns like blazing fire, like a mighty flame![6]  We hope love is as strong as death, but we need something stronger than death!  Does God’s grace burn so bright?  Has He a flame inextinguishable by death’s chill?”

As sin reigned in death, even so grace might reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord![7] Hear it!  There burns a grace death’s cold cannot staunch!  

Is Snow White’s hope truer than a poisoned apple?  Did Cinderella’s step-family’s malice fail in the presence of her Prince?  Can God’s grace free you from death?  As sin reigned in death, even so grace might reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord!

Two truths ring false or truer than caskets we follow to cemeteries.  Baptism & communion broadcast that Jesus’ life overpowers death.  Baptism says His life has entered me — for forever!

3Do you not know that all of us baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? 4Therefore we have been buried with Christ through baptism into death, in order that as Christ was raised from the dead through the Father’s glory, so we too might walk in newness of life [start now]. 5For if we became united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we will be also in the likeness of His resurrection![8]

As we die with Christ, we also live with Him, 9knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, is never to die again; death no longer masters Him. 10For the death Jesus died, He died to sin, once for all; but the life Jesus lives, He lives to God 6:8-10.  God’s mystery: He meets us in baptism.  More than mere symbol.  Hear the more of baptism.  5For if we became united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall be also in the likeness of His resurrection!

And taking communion we tell each other: “I have tasted eternity in Christ!”  We say, “I died!”  We say, “I know death is real.  I know my sin brought my death!  But, guess what?  God’s Son died for me!  I died in Him.  I am alive in Him today.  The life I live this day, I’m living forever!  Far beyond Snow White, the Little Mermaid, and Star Wars I live with Him!

There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. 2For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death. 3For what the Law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did: sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, He condemned sin (and its slime: death) in the flesh 8:1-3

Breathe eternity today!  Be free from death!  Live forever in Christ.  Be freed from death.  Are you free from death or forgetting you are eternal, and covered in yesterday’s dust?  Do you have Christ?  If Christ has you, then you know these lines.

I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.[9] 

Can I know anyone was ever freed from death?  That man saying “this is my body and blood” sat later in a tomb, fresh from death, awaiting angels to roll away a stone, in thick darkness.  He patiently folded His head covering.  Not thrown aside, but free of its embrace, Jesus neither fled it nor hated it.

Why bother with church if I am free from sin, wrath, religion, and death?

We know we’ve passed from death to life, because we love our brothers and sisters.  Anyone who does not love remains in death.[10]  Free from death, we take Communion with our Christ, and our brothers and sisters.  Christ said, make it right with them, then come to My table together!

Snow White in a service is unbelievable?  Well people deserving of death and hell worshipping together, living eternally?  That is beyond unbelievably amazing, but true!

---

[1] Romans 6:3-5

[2]  Genesis 3:3

[3]  2 Kings 20:1-7 

[4] Job 2:9

[5] Romans 5:12-15

[6] the Song of Solomon:  8:6

[7] Romans 5:21 

[8] Romans 6:3-5

[9]  Romans 8:38-39

[10] 1 John 3:14

Free from Religion

The Four Freedoms: Freedom #3. Free from Law/Religion. 

Free?  Thank you, but free from what?  Is it like wishing I was free from my high school principal, who I dreaded only to find later he was a good friend in high school?

In free from law I stumble on free.  For wild west heroes “law” was a gun.  Is free like third graders’ hope, “Can I do whatever I want?”  Is free, like Harvard did?  Way back Harvard played Yale at home.  Harvard painted the game balls scarlet to match their jerseys.  The whole backfield tucked their arms as though carrying the ball.  Only one carried the ball matching his uniform.  Yale often tackled the wrong man and Harvard won, but Yale won the rule challenge.  Harvard was not free from law.

See free in a new way.  See Mozart, Captain Nemo, and Fromm.  A starving Mozart composed for Opera.  He brought all he knew of composition to write for Opera’s low-rent stage!  He surpassed other composers while using the same laws of composition.  He charted new frontiers for orchestras, not by ignoring rules, but enlivening them to compose scores no one had yet dared ¾ free! 

In Disney’s old movie, a professor is swept overboard with Kirk Douglas sporting an earring.  Scary: but it got worse.  The monster that sank his ship that night was metallic: a submarine!  Its futuristic designer, Captain Nemo, faced boat construction laws, but overcame their design limitations.  He used the laws of physics to design Nautilus.  The Nautilus opened 70% of the world to her crew to freely explore.

Fromm saw Nazis in concentration camps could make you endure anything.  But guards could not make you love them.  Fromm, as a prisoner, was free to choose what he felt, or how he reacted.  All law — all power hits a limit.  None of it can command love.  Christ takes us to law’s limits, and then beyond. 

Free is no third grade hope to “do what I want.”  Free means, I use law’s parts to do what is best.  I use either the print or spirit of law to accomplish what God sees in law.  Free means I do more than law intends.  Jesus said it.  I don’t understand all He said, since I do baby talk about freedom. 

I don’t worry over freedom from law as Paul did.  I want free before considering law.  Listen.  “How fast can I drive before the police ticket me?”  That’s paranoid not free.  “How much can I copy in a paper before it is plagiarizing?”  That’s not free, it is “how much can I get away with?”  “How much can I massage my numbers before the IRS says, I cheated on my taxes?”  That’s not free, it’s embezzling.

Free is Mozart exploding music’s conventions.  Free is Nemo descending into oceans.  Free uses law to create what no one thought possible.  Free is — Free is becoming the person God created you to be in Christ.  Jesus said it.  I don’t understand all He said, since I do baby talk about freedom. 

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus fired five zingers.  They begin, “you’ve heard it said, but I tell you.”  Jesus shared how much deeper law must go to be like He is.  “You’ve heard it said, ‘Do not murder….’ But I tell you anyone who is angry with his brother will be subject to judgment.”[1]  Are you angry at others?  Isn’t anger murderous? Are you free to see you as God does?  I fear that.  I lie to myself about murderous anger using conventions like annoyed or irritated: mad.

Jesus again.  “You’ve heard it said, ‘Do not commit adultery.’ But I tell you anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”[2]  Do you lust after someone?  I didn’t ask, “Are you admiring God’s handiwork.”  We lie to ourselves….

Jews felt the oral laws Jesus attacked came from God’s mouth to their ears.  The oral tradition felt like the Scientific Method.  Jews hypothesized how God wanted things (they wanted).  If a conjecture lasted a generation, it was upgraded to theory.  If a theory survived, it got became law – oral law.  

We do the same.  Racist American laws “explained” blacks as a lesser species.  It exploded in race riots (Atlanta, 1906: Tulsa, 1921 etc.).  Whites feared treating them as if Christ died equally for us all. 

We use theological laws to get what we like in worship. Do you think God prefers a pipe organ to a devout deacon’s drums in Papua?  Our glib sayings explain why we don’t do what God commands.  Paul screams, “Much of my private religion was insane! Get free!”

In the name of religious differences, we can’t work together.  “Get free from it,” says God.  In the name of a religious malaise, we simply attend church.  “Get free from it,” says God.  In a strange heresy, we assemble “to feel good about ourselves”.  “Get free from it,” says God. 

Pinpointing bad law is easy.  Obeying law’s best is hard.  Good law makes me better.  I bypass drugs: against the law.  I bypass sex with minors: unlawful.  I don’t drink and drive: against the law.  Good law makes choices clearer.  Good law more than keeps me law-abiding, it brings me to a point — to a point of needing something more.

You may obey law as you fear getting caught.  You may obey a law: it works for you.  You may obey because it helps your family, school, or town.  Those good reasons, are all “outside” of you.  Piaget called it heteronomous morality.  Your reasons for doing a right thing lie outside of you.  You attend church as you fear what others think.  Right action: “outside” reason.  God says, “Get an “inside” reason,” I will write my laws (religion) on your heart![3]  Inside!  3K years before Piaget!  Piaget said, move up to autonomous morality: reasons “inside” you.  The Law hands us up to Someone else.  The Law raises us as children, and then hands us up to Someone else. 

Mature says, “God wrote this law on my heart.”  Revisit Jesus’ words in the Sermon on the Mount.  “You’ve heard it said, ‘Do not murder….’ But I tell you anyone who is angry with his brother…”  Law pushes me past externals like picking up a gun to my first emotion:  “Am I hating you, and letting my hate grow?”  We lie and label things to escape the truth of our sin.  Jesus wept.  Paul screams. 

Jesus:  “You’ve heard it said, ‘Do not commit adultery.’ But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully ―.”  Long before you need a pill or prophylactic, move beyond law to the battle in your mind!  Jesus pushes us beyond Law to deeper relationships with God that require –that require what?

The Law hand us up to Someone else.  The Law raises us as children, to hand us up to Someone else. 

Paul sketched two pictures to see the best of law.  He sketches a woman marrying her beau.  He dies.  There is no adultery if she dates another man.  No one stands at her wedding to object.[4] 

The law was our first spouse.  Faithful to her in my youth, she pushed me to hunger for depths she never provided.  She provided a home to get to know Him who sent her.  In her i became intimate with the thoughts of Him who sent her.  Then she was replaced.

Law, sooner or later leaves me wishing for more.  Religion, sooner or later is not enough!  Law is like learning to hear dots and dashes.  Law builds a Morse receiver set in me so God can circumcise my heart.  I finally hear a code, recognize it as an SOS and first think it is from someone else, but it is from my heart!  My heart is sending an SOS that all else fall short of what it hopes to experience! 

You see, law deposits me at the limits of my sin and my self.[5]  Paul didn’t know how to covet until Law showed him.  I “learned to sin at church” because I was raised there?  Can I move beyond being religious to love Someone deeper, truer, freer?  Paul hopes so in these verses.

Hear Paul:  7:14ff.  I call these the teen verses, because as teens, we learn the depths of this pain!  We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin.  I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do–this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.

So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?  Paul’s heart sent out this SOS!

The Law is destined to hand us off to Someone or Something better.  Law raises us up as children, to hand us as maturing adults to Someone else. 

Theologians question in this passage, “Who is the ‘I’”?  Is “I” all of us?  Is “I” Paul only?  They also ask, “When is the ‘I’?”  Some think Paul’s despair happened before coming to Christ, because “No one in Christ wrestles so.  After all, Christ delivered us from sin!”  Hmm.

For hundreds of years, teachers said Paul impersonated someone before Christ, maybe himself… Origen, et al.  Augustine started that way, but then Augustine changed his mind.  Why?

First, Paul is free to see himself.  God’s spotlight[6] on him blinded him for three days, so he saw in himself!  Paul here sees his sarx: messy, chaotic (vs. 14).  In vs. 18 Paul sees, “nothing good lives in me.”  Without Christ you may hold an illusion: self-righteousness.  Jesus’ people know better.  We see our enemy within, and it is us, and we cry out to God.

Second, see Paul’s attitude toward law/religion.  He mercilessly sees religion’s limits.  He never disses it to excuse himself.  Law is never relative.  In vs. 12 he calls it, holy, righteous and good.  In vs. 14 he calls it spiritual.  In vs. 19 he says [Law] is the good I want to do!  In vs. 22 he says, In my inner being, I delight in God’s law.  He acknowledges God’s goodness and genius in law.

Third, the law delivers Paul to religion’s far boundary to hand him up to Someone: Christ!  (vs. 24), What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?”  Law brought Paul to the end of any illusions about himself. 

Paul came to the limitless Jesus sobbing for a Deliverer.  Anyone can come to the Deliverer! 

Paul shares another image (Galatians 3) where Law is the executor of God’s estate.  We inherit the estate as babies.  We can’t run the estate, so our Parent makes Law our executor.  We watch the Executor.  Learn from it.  Seek its wisdom, until a day we are transformed as God’s children to transcend laws we know.  No religion including self-help changes us!  None.  Only God’s Spirit changes us!

Will you transcend traditions, to be new in Christ?   

Can you move past loving friends and hating enemies to loving anyone God sends you?  Do you fear such freedom?  Do freedom’s requirements scare you?  Can they scare you to depend on Him?

Can freedom’s requirements drive you to your knees to seek Him every morning? 

Paul might like Piaget, but Paul was a poet.  You see, Paul left his first love, Law.  He died to it.  He cried out for a Deliverer.  His was Christ.  Christ will love you, take you beyond does and don’t to life. 

Paul found a better, deeper, more demanding love.  Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom … with gratitude in your hearts to God” Col. 3:16.

Ready to move beyond “oughts” and “shouldn’ts” to life in Christ? 

Make no mistake.  Salvation demands more of you, of a changed you.  War demanded more out of vets in WW2, Korea, Vietnam and the Gulf.  No training prepared them fully.  But they faced the horrors of foxholes, freezing and melting, being overrun, no cigarettes, no warm food and dying friends.  And you hear vets say an odd thing, “I was never more alive.” Frightening and wonderful, this love in Christ.

More than Mozart hoped, I hum my Beloved’s eternal music!  More than Jules Verne hoped, I descend into the depths of my God!  More than anyone in any school, having learned from the Law, I am now free to attempt the impossible in the love of my Lord. 

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[1] Matthew 5:21-22

[2] Matthew 5:27-28

[3] Jeremiah 31:33

[4] Romans 7:1-7

[5] Romans 7:7-12

[6] In Paul’s conversion on his way to Damascus.

The world’s most important prison guards

In 1989.  Guards around the world brought their cares and worries from home, did a job no one regarded as critical or important, returned home to do the next thing in endless daily cycles.  If they remembered names for their charges, it was a pet name for the faceless ones… no real names.  They took shifts, hated their jobs, and remembered no faceless ones.  If they abused prisoners, it was not like abusing people that matter. 

In Robben Island, a brutal, unheated, fort; filled with 8 by 6 cells, the guards had no idea what to do with the tall, black Communist.  He devoured any news and sports they shared.  In one of Prague’s nameless prisons, a playwright, in and out for the past ten years seemed burdened by high sounding ideas the guards only laughed about. 

Those guards, who doubtless thought they were far above their prisoners, who saw their jobs as fairly meaningless, and their prisoners even more so — were guarding Vaclav Havel and Nelson Mandela.

Both men would be elected to the highest office of their countries within a couple of years.  Both would tell the country to work at forgiveness, something the guards worried about. 

The faceless men in those two cells would govern some 16 million and 36 million people, including their former guards. 

Jesus said God is always raising up the powerless, and bringing down those who exalt themselves.  That is something the military junta in Myanmar, and countless other despots stay awake at night dreading.  It is also what countless prisoners dream of in their sweetest dreams.   

And you.  Who did you disregard so lightly today?